Chapter 16
Sixteen
Elodie
I’ve just reached the sidewalk outside the school when a provocative whistle pierces my eardrums. “Hey, look, it’s the princess turned punk. If you really want to have your world rocked, I’m right here, patatina!”
I glance over to see Salvatore holding court with a few assorted cousins and hangers-on from the lucent mafia crowd.
As they guffaw at his comments, he aims an exaggerated grin at me, his gaze sweeping over my body.
His attention sets off an unwelcome wash of heat that’s both anger and an echo of undeserved attraction.
If only he knew. If the Salvatore I left behind heard someone talk to me like that, he’d have his knife to the guy’s throat before I’d even managed to blink.
I don’t see any point in dignifying the catcall with a full response. Turning away, I aim my middle finger in his general direction and hurry off in the direction I saw Grady Tadros heading.
The lanky guy is just getting into the back seat of a swanky sedan that’s pulled up to the corner.
Swallowing a curse, I stride by as if I haven’t even noticed him and grasp the nearest tickles of ephemera.
As the car’s engine growls, I toss a strand of magical energy toward it, keeping one end in my grasp.
The sedan zooms out of my view in a matter of seconds, but the spell I shaped tugs at my fingers. I’ll be able to follow its trail as long as he doesn’t go too far.
I pick up my pace, dragging more ephemera toward me. The concealment illusion I wrap around me dulls the stink of car exhaust from the other vehicles rumbling by.
As soon as I’m sure none of my classmates should notice me, I speed up to a jog.
My morning exercise sessions have kept me limber. I barely break a sweat as I track the sedan’s course block by block, sensing where it paused at stop signs and red lights, where it accelerated on a longer stretch unhindered.
Its course leads around the edge of our upper crust lucent neighborhood. I’m starting to wonder if Grady was simply going home when I sense a longer pause halfway down a block of majestic Victorians-turned-business offices.
I slow down before I come up on the spot, taking in the street around me. It feels like Grady must have gotten out here, or why would the car have stopped?
Was he visiting the law offices, or this architectural firm, or—?
My feet stall just before I reach the exact spot where the sedan briefly parked. Fern-like concrete moldings jut from the maroon bricks along the corner of the building in front of me.
I’ve seen those decorative fronds before. In Other Elodie’s photographs.
I dispel my tracking thread but keep my concealment illusion around me as I study the building.
It’s a three-story Victorian like those around it, clean white paint framing the arched windows and front door, polished wrought iron railings on either side of the front steps.
There’s no business sign on the railings or the brick face.
I peer down the narrow alley beside it and make out a side door most of the way down. Venturing that way, I find a walled patio off the back. No sound carries from it, but a thick layer of ephemera tingles against my awareness. A whiff of a floral scent suggests some kind of garden.
Either this back area doesn’t get used much or it’s magically sound-proofed. Based on the amount of energy gathered around the space, I’d bet good money on the latter.
The photos Other Elodie snapped were mainly of the side alley, but I have no idea why. The windows low enough for me to peer into are cloaked by thick brocade curtains.
Sliding my phone out of my satchel, I return to the front of the building. With my shoulders propped against the corner of the architecture office next door, I can keep an eye on the front and side entrances without risking anyone bumping into me.
While I watch, several more cars pull up.
The first few let out fellow Luminary Academy students—all 13th years or older.
The only figure I recognize by name is Kenneth Hearst, the other survivor of my reality’s unsolved student murders, his head ducked as he trails behind his older brother to the front door.
With each arrival, someone just inside the door gives a warm but formal greeting by name. It doesn’t sound like I could just wander in there to see what the deal is without being vetted.
As the workday winds to an end, an older set of patrons starts departing their chauffeured cars, ranging from a guy in his early 20s who I think would have only graduated a couple of years ago to a portly man with a cane and bone-white hair.
Every piece of clothing they’re wearing looks designer and tailored. Gold cufflinks flash in the sunlight.
And they’re all men. By the time I’ve seen a dozen figures head inside, I have a solid suspicion that whatever this place is, women aren’t allowed.
So what could Other Elodie have been doing here? And how can I find out, if she couldn’t have gone in to begin with?
I snap pics of every patron just in case something proves useful later, but most of them arrive alone, so there’s no conversation to overhear. The few men I see leaving depart the same way, straight into cars they’ve summoned.
There has to be something about this place. My doppelganger took pictures of it, and she was asking around about one of its patrons.
I peer up at the second and third floor windows. Are they all covered too? I can’t tell from this angle.
Even if they are, I might be able to hear something through the glass. Possibly slip inside if a room seems to be empty. Would they have bothered adding protections to entry points most normal people would never consider trying to access?
I head down the alley again and survey the backs of the neighboring buildings. There’s one with a fire escape farther down.
Jackpot.
I might not be so enlightened I can levitate like a swami, but magic covers for a lot of failings. With a combination of muscular heft and concentrated ephemera, I leap high enough to grab the bottom landing of the metal structure. Then I climb the rest of the way up the drab way.
It’s another scramble to get to the roof, but easy enough to leap the gaps between the buildings with a little magical buoyancy. I crouch on the shingles over the architecture office and consider my options.
The largest third-floor window on the building of interest stands right across from a thinner one below me. That’ll do.
I shimmy down to the ledge, steadying my balance with a healthy helping of gathered ephemera. After eyeballing my destination through the quickening thud of my heart, I poise and spring across.
I know how to be careful. My plan is to check thoroughly for protective enchantments while I’m braced outside the window, before I even touch the pane of glass.
Normally, that’s all I’d need to do. But the second my feet hit the window frame, my hands flying up to grasp the edges, a current of magic hitches through the soles of my boots.
My pulse hiccups with it. Shit. I know a magical alarm system when I feel one.
What the hell are they doing in this place that they have even the outer ledges of the upper windows in the security system?
I don’t have time to curse out the irritatingly over-cautious people who own the building. Ignoring the pang in my muscles at the hasty exertion, I twist around and fling myself back toward the building next door.
One more quick boost of ephemera heaves me to the roof. I scramble all the way to the fire escape without waiting to see who’ll answer the alarm.
If they’re so paranoid they monitor their window frames, I can’t trust that they won’t sense and break the spell that’s hiding me.
I trudge down the fire escape, grumbling inwardly at the failed attempt. All I learned is that the people who run the place guard their secrets as tightly as the men in black.
I take a slow stroll to the end of the block and past the fronts of the buildings again, as if I’m coming up on the mystery mansion for the first time. When I reach it, there’s no activity by the window I assaulted.
If they investigated the disturbance, they must have decided it wasn’t an emergency.
Now what?
I hang around by the architecture office for a while longer, worrying at my lower lip. Debating possible magical means of getting a glimpse into the building and dismissing them one by one.
As my imagined schemes move from unwise to outright absurd, two more men shove into view—out the side door rather than the front.
Even as my hand jerks my phone up automatically to take their picture, I note their clothing: white dress shirts and gloves, black vest and slacks, not quite as well-fitted as the clothes of the people who headed in the front.
A staff uniform. These must be some of the people who cater to the upper-crust customers.
Both of them look to be twenty-something. They hustle past me, one with his hands clenched and his face flushed in blotches, the other’s gaze twitching nervously toward his companion. Something’s riled them up.
I think I’d like to find out what.
Thankfully, the business’s employees don’t have access to the same car services as their patrons. They march off down the street on foot.
For the first few blocks I follow them, they remain silent—stormy on one side, apprehensive on the other. Then the pissed-off guy rakes his hand through his black hair and seems to decide they’ve gotten enough distance from their place of employment.
His voice bursts from his mouth, hushed but forceful enough that I can hear him from several paces back. “Those sadistic dicks! Who the hell do they think they are? I’ve put up with enough. This is the limit.”
“Chuck,” his companion says in a pleading tone, raising his hands. “You know they’ll have forgotten about it by tomorrow.”
“I won’t forget. The job is supposed to be to get them their drinks and their coats or whatever, not to put up with that shit.”
“Just ignore them.”
“No. I can’t anymore. I’m never going back there. And Danvers can fuck himself if he thinks I’m going to bother giving notice.”
He stalks a little farther to a beat-up pick-up truck he yanks open the door of. His coworker watches him go with a sigh and tramps onward.
As the truck peels away, I let them go. I’m not going to hear any more details when they’re apart.
“Get them their drinks and their coats and whatever.” Is the place some kind of pub? Why wouldn’t it have a sign?
I turn toward the building I left, but my spirits have sunk. I’ve wasted another couple of hours hanging around here following the leads my double left me, and can I say it’s gotten me anywhere?
I have to get out of this reality. Away from all the pompous pricks I have to pretend to be like and the matches who have no idea they should do anything but glower and snark at me.
How much more is it going to take?